Since hooking up our clerk's PC to the internet (and installing the Sophos firewall and anti-virus software...which I think is the main problem) our PC is very slow now....booting up takes forever (I think it is updating the antivirus program)...it also is very slow doing anything after it is booted up. We have a 2.4GHz Celeron processor and only 256MB of RAM (which I think could be the issue). However, the 2 other clerk's PCs in the other wards have the exact same configuration and they are not nearly as slow as ours. What could I try to fix this other than add memory? I was going to try and uninstall the firewall and antivirus briefly just to see if that is the problem but they don't appear anywhere when using the Windows remove programs tool from the control panel.

One other question. Since hooking up our clerk's PC to the internet (and installing the Sophos firewall and anti-virus software...which I think is the main problem) our PC is very slow now....booting up takes forever (I think it is updating the antivirus program)...it also is very slow doing anything after it is booted up. We have a 2.4GHz Celeron processor and only 256MB of RAM (which I think could be the issue). However, the 2 other clerk's PCs in the other wards have the exact same configuration and they are not nearly as slow as ours. What could I try to fix this other than add memory? I was going to try and uninstall the firewall and antivirus briefly just to see if that is the problem but they don't appear anywhere when using the Windows remove programs tool from the control panel.

Yes, unless the PC's are scheduled to be replaced, I would start by installing a minimum of 512MB in each one. (In THIS post, I explain how we did it in our stake on a fairly tight budget.) I would then compare the performance with the other PC's in your stake and see if there are still significant differences. It's possible there's something else going on too.

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Mikerowaved wrote:Yes, unless the PC's are scheduled to be replaced, I would start by installing a minimum of 512MB in each one. (In THIS post, I explain how we did it in our stake on a fairly tight budget.) I would then compare the performance with the other PC's in your stake and see if there are still significant differences. It's possible there's something else going on too.

Maybe a hard drive defrag would help as well. This could cause unnecessary slow down if it hasn't been done in a long time (or ever).

Many questions are already answered on the LDSTech wiki. Check it out!

mkmurray wrote:Maybe a hard drive defrag would help as well. This could cause unnecessary slow down if it hasn't been done in a long time (or ever).

+1 on the defrag. If the machines are the same models with the same amount of memory, that would be where I'd start.

Also, disable the OpenOffice fast loader (I'm not sure if that's what it's called.) The icon appears in the systray after the computer has settled down. Having that do it's thing while the computer is booting will slow it down. Right-click on the icon to get into the controls.

Have you searched the Wiki?
Try using a Google search by adding "site:tech.lds.org/wiki" to the search criteria.

As has been said, if you are not planning on replacing the computer soon, buy 1GB of RAM for it. You will be astounded by how much of a difference $60 (or so) worth or RAM makes in a computer's speed.
If you don't know what kind of memory to get, several memory manufacturers (such as Crucial) have a memory identifier on their websites where you can put in your computer's make/model and they tell you how much of what kind of memory can be installed in your computer.

However, maybe a plug for defragging as well? We have a couple wards that still run on 256. One is bearable, the other is painfully slow.

Sophos does appear to update the first time the computer is turned on each day. This really slows down things for the first 5 minutes or so. Once the update has finished (the shield stops animating) things usually pick up a bit.

Have you tried doing Ctr Alt Del and seeing what processes are running? Look at memory and CPU. I also had the same problem with our clerk computer so I upgraded memory to 512. It runs better but would probably help to have 1 gig of ram.